<p>well actually since i am a transfer applicant, currently an out of stater (from texas) attending uc berkeley, i am looking to move from this large, bureaucratic and impersonal place to a happy, small, close knit school. from what i hear, swarthmore is caring and slightly eccentric, and i think i'd enjoy this. but i'm worried since swarthmore is already very selective, and transfer admissions are even more difficult. not at all sure of my chances, or of the financial aid package i would receive if i were to be accepted. money will be another big factor.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My jaw continues to drop at the sorts of things you assume people are choosing Swarthmore for.
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</p>
<p>The "choosing" stage is more simplistic. However, it is often driven by conversations with alumni and current students. And, many of the things that make people love the school flow directly from the huge resources dedicated to undergraduate education. A perfect example you cite is the campus. Indeed, that attracts a lot of potential applicants. That campus doesn't happen without the endowment.</p>
<p>It's not a recent part of the school's history. A defining moment in Swarthmore's history was the hiring of Frank Aydelotte as the school's first non-Quaker president in 1921. He came to Swarthmore with the explicit purpose of instituting the Honors Program. He agreed to take the job only on the stipulation that the board would raise the funds for the honors program and hiring faculty.</p>
<p>ID, I'm in awe of your knowledge of Swarthmore history and statistics. You're neither an alum nor a current student, yet you probably know more about the school than about 98% of the school's alumni and current students. Impressive. Informative. Thank you.</p>
<p>Pinkearmufs, Swarthmore is need blind for transfers, I believe, and from what I've heard, the school is generous. It should be, with that big fat endowment everyone likes to write about.</p>
<p>So where does Sarah Lawrence get the money for scholarship aid if they have a small endowment?</p>
<p>To follow up IDad's comment about Frank Aydelotte, one of major factors contributing to my S's decision to apply ED to Swat was the Honors Program. Funding for the Honors Program is not insubstantial as Swat needs to bring to campus faculty members from colleges and universities throughout the country to meet with the individual students in the Honors Program and administer their exams.</p>
<p>mensa:</p>
<p>I can't find Sarah Lawrence's financial reports, so I can't give you the full range of comparative numbers, including spending per student.</p>
<p>However, the short answer to your question is that SLC states that they are overly reliant on student tuition and fee revenue (80% of their operating budget compared to 40% at Swarthmore).</p>
<p>Based on their USNEWS data, I think it's fair to say that SLC charges much more on average (over $45,000 a year in tuition, room, board) than any college I've looked at and is probably one of the highest cost colleges in the country. They have a extreme version of the "soak the rich" pricing strategy and are fortunate to have a Westchester County location that is probably the best hunting ground for wealthy customers in the United States.</p>
<p>For example, 53% of their students receive no need-based grants or scholarships. This is comparable to Swarthmore's 52%. However, Sarah Lawrance charges those full-pay students a whopping 10% higher price than Swarthmore ($4,200 extra per year multiplied by 53% of the student body). And, Swarthmore's sticker price is by no means inexpensive.</p>
<p>On the other end of the scale, SLC provides less financial aid than Swarthmore. They only meet full need for 81% of their financial aid students versus 100% at Swarthmore. Despite the higher sticker-price, they offer less scholarship/grant funding. The average grant/scholarship (this figure includes funding from college and non-college sources) for their need-aid students is $20,799 versus $23,604 at Swarthmore. So, for their average need-based scholarship student, that's a $7,000 shortfall between what what is received in outright grants and the sticker price compared to Swarthmore's aid students.</p>
<p>The two schools have the same percentage of Pell Grant recepients (under $40k per year income), who are presumably getting very close to a full-ride deal at both schools. So, these numbers suggest to me that SLC is heavily polarized -- with some very low income students, a lot of very high income students, and not much in the middle.</p>
<p>I suspect, purely from the pricing/aid numbers, that the two student bodies have a very different feel. And, in fact, you can see the impact of this high sticker price strategy in the diversity numbers:</p>
<p>Af-Am: Swat 6% - SLC 5%
Asian-Am: Swat 16% - SLC 4%
Hispanic: Swat 9% - SLC 3%
N. Amer: Swat 1% - SLC 1%
International: Swat 6% - SLC 2%
White: Swat 62% - SLC 85%</p>
<p>SLC's 85% white/US percentage is one of the highest I have seen, while Swat's 62% is one of the lowest on the East Coast. Since diversity is very expensive, this is clearly one huge difference that results from the per student endowment. </p>
<p>Understand that I am in no way knocking Sarah Lawrence. They are in the same boat as 99 point something percent of all US colleges in having negligible endowment contribution to the operating budget. They don't have the luxury of not maximizing their student revenues. It is certainly possible to provide an excellent education without much endowment contribution just like it is possible to build a truly superb automobile without leather seats and a power moonroof. For example, diversity is an "optional luxury package" that may not mean a darn thing to a consumer, so why pay for it?</p>
<p>If you can find a link to SLC's 2003/04 Financial Reports, I'll be happy to run the numbers and give you the other key numbers such as per student tuition revenues, per student spending, etc. It only takes about a minute. I'm particularly interested in SLCs average per net student fee revenue, because I suspect it may be one of the highest in the country. I can already tell that it is higher than any I've looked at so far. Haverford is the highest I've seen ($28.9k per year) with Smith, Wellesley, and Wesleyan in the $27.3k to $27.5k range.</p>
<p>
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Funding for the Honors Program is not insubstantial...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The cost of Aydelottte's legacy goes beyond the outside examiners' expense. His Honors Program ultimately led to a seminar-based approach throughout the entire college. So, for example, we don't see large class sections for Intro Economics. Instead, we see the course broken up into 7 sections capped at 25 students, each taught by a professor. It would be much more cost effective to have one class of 160 or two classes of 80, particularly for such a popular major.</p>
<p>hi id - in what ways would you say brown is similar to swat?</p>
<p>Swat doesn't seem much like Brown to me.</p>
<p>Brown is one of Swat's most common cross-admits, although I don't think it is terribly similar across the board.</p>
<p>It is pretty similar in terms of admissions selectivity. Also, among the northeast private universities, its student body is probably closer to Swarthmore's (more liberal, less "preppy", less "pre-professional", more "quirky", etc.) than, for example, Dartmouth's student body. I don't think Brown has quite the academic focus, across the board, that Swarthmore has.</p>
<p>It's really hard to make categorical comparisons to universities because universities tend to have several distinctly different segments of their student bodies. It makes broad sweeping characterizations difficult.</p>
<p>Why is Brown so hot now? I heard it's harder to get into than HYPS.</p>
<p>After you've spent twelve years of your life clawing your way to the top of the academic heap, spending virtually all of your free time taking prep courses and taking part in every enrichment program your parents can think to provide, a lot of people see Brown as a time to kick back and simply enjoy learning for its own sake. It's lack of rigid requirements and "impossible to get an "F"" grading systems make for an aggressively laid back academic experience.</p>
<p>Off topic, but to address a few exaggerations. </p>
<p>Brown is very tough to get into, but not as tough as HYPS. </p>
<p>This has been the case for a long time. Its popularity is nothing new.</p>
<p>It is technically impossible to have an F recorded on your transcript, but it is certainly possible to fail a course. After all, you combine a talented student body with requirements only within the major, and you end up with no broad distribution courses set up to cram civilization down the throats of engineers or to water down science for the poets. This means every course is a real course, and every student has either selected that course in particular, or the major for which the course is required. Since you need to pass courses to graduate, and you need a consistent record of good academic performance to show to graduate or professional schools (which most Brown students end up attending) or to employers, the absence of F's on the transcript would be less significant than an absence of A's.</p>
<p>Brown seems to be the major cross admit university of most of the northeastern liberal arts colleges. Since these colleges themselves vary quite a bit, this is probably not because they are similar in the more obvious details. It appears to be because Brown, by reputation, offers some of the intangible feel more associated with LAC's than with universities. Perhaps a higher level of engagement by the faculty than is typical of the elite universities, perhaps a stronger arts focus due to the association with RISD.</p>
<p>Endowments.</p>
<p>It is easy to exaggerate the importance of endowments to students. Obviously administrators would like the endowments to be as high as possible since they have to pay the bills. Of course it is almost impossible to compare LAC endowments to those of universities, because of the broader mix of purposes to which the universities apply their funds. However, consider two other LAC's with a history of intense academics, and producing scholars, similar to Swarthmore- Carleton and Reed. Both provide a budding scholar with an intellectual undergraduate experience difficult to reproduce at a university and both turn out lots of PhD's. But their endowments are far smaller. </p>
<p>Besides the obvious, and often ignored, fact that the reported spending figures reflect a lot about how each college operates internally, and which expenses are counted as student related, the costs of living vary widely. So a dollar in some locations goes farther than a dollar in others. Bringing in speakers is cheaper in an area with lots of potential speakers in town- you don't have to fly them in. Are all the service people on campus unionized or not? The dorms are not necessarily any cleaner, or the buildings better maintained if there is a unionized workforce with higher benefits, but the costs are higher. Harvard is in the process of making major increases in compensation for some of its lowest paid employees. This was a student political issue, and it may be the right thing to do, but it is hard to imagine that the educational experience for undergrads will change one bit.</p>
<p>How expensive is your plant to maintain? How much do you have to depreciate the buildings? The former depends a lot on technical details of how the campus is laid out, who does the work, and how the buildings were designed and constructed. This can have huge cost implications, with no effect on education. The latter depends a lot on when they were built, and how they are used. Again, this affects the reporting of expenses, while doing nothing for education.</p>
<p>Looking at overall expenses is just too crude a measure to interpret meaningfully. It would be helpful to look at, for example, facutly salaries, adjusting for local cost of living, and benefits. Both adjustments can be huge. Consider for a moment the cost of being a professor in Northfield, Minnesota to being in Manhattan. Barnard would have to pay someone a lot more money for the faculty member to break even vs Carleton. Does that mean the Barnard students are getting anything at all better than at Carleton? No, it has nothing to do with the educational experience.</p>
<p>None of which is to argue that Swarthmore is anything other than a wonderful college.</p>
<p>I have no idea how they come up with the cross-applications (or even if these are really cross-applications or cross-admits), but Brown is not on Williams' top five. It is on both Amherst's and Swarthmore's top-5:</p>
<p>Williams:
Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale</p>
<p>Amherst:
Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Willams, Yale</p>
<p>Swarthmore:
Amherst, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Yale</p>
<p>Bowdoin:
Amherst, Colby, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Williams</p>
<p>Haverford:
Brown, Swarthmore, Tufts, UPenn, Wesleyan</p>
<p>Vassar:
Brown, Columbia, Wellesley, Wesleyan</p>
<p>Wellesley, Middlebury, and Wesleyan didn't provide their lists to USNEWS.</p>
<p>I don't see many surprises on these lists. I think Columbia and UPenn just feel "too big" for the LAC applicants. Harvard probably does too, but Harvard is Harvard. They could have 25,000 undergrads and it wouldn't matter.</p>
<p>Swarthmore and Amherst don't tend to attract as many rural, outdoorsy types who would cross apply to Dartmouth. So, they get the Princeton and Brown cross-applicants.</p>
<p>Your spending analysis makes sense, except that the data is unmistakably clear: the colleges that spend the most attract the most applicants and are ranked the highest (i.e. perceived "prestige"). Some of that is definitely related to location. Costs are higher on the East Coast than in Northfield, Minn. However, that is reflective of the fact that more people want to live (or go to college there). So, I suppose it is reasonable to include a desireable location as "consumer value delivered".</p>
<p>interesteddad, quite interesting. What is the source of this info? Since the applicant pools at Amherst Williams and Dartmouth are as likely to be correlated at any I could imagine with the the possible exception of Caltech/MIT. I am surprised Brown does not register on Williams alone among the three/ Could this be Williams preppy/ock orientation?</p>
<p>re: cost of living- as an aspiring academic, I'd take a pay CUT to live in a high COL city like NYC or Boston, as opposed to having to spend my late 20's and 30's in a small college town. The location itself is part of the job's compensation package.</p>
<p>US News does adjust for cost of living, though, in its faculty category, which I think is silly when considering the commonly held preferences I just mentioned.</p>
<p>The "cross-admit" data is self-reported by the schools to USNEWS. I don't know where it comes from. I suspect that it comes from financial aid FAFSA reports, but it also could come from freshmen surveys. I'm not even sure that it comes from consistent sources.</p>
<p>I don't think the Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore differences are all that surprising. Although they have changed their admissions profile in the last couple of years, Williams has lagged behind Amherst and Swarthmore in percentage of students qualifying for need-based aid (Williams 42%, Amherst 46%, Swarthmore 48%) and diversity, especially Asian-American (Williams 9%, Amherst 13%, Swarthmore 16%).</p>
<p>Those differences alone could be enough to move a cross-admit school up or down a notch or two.</p>
<p>My sense is that Williams is the most homogeneously New England prep shool, jock oriented of the three. Swarthmore is the most non-prep, non-jock of the three. Amherst is a hybrid - half Williams and half Swarthmore. </p>
<p>I don't think Swarthmore and Williams share many cross-applicants. Swarthmore and Amherst share a lot, but those probably come more from outside the New England prep schools. Swarthmore has the highest percentage of public high school freshmen; Williams the lowest; Amherst in the middle. Both Amherst and Swarthmore have been enrolling 10% to 11% first generation college students.</p>
<p>Some Williams folk disagree with me, but I think the Pres. Morty Schapiro recognized that the relative lack of diversity viz-a-viz Amherst (and to a lesser extent Swarthmore) could eventually become a competitive liability. They are sensitive about the "preppie, white, jock" stereotype -- although from a marketing standpoint, it's a very effective brand identity. </p>
<p>Williams has made a major diversity push in the last few years, including hiring the Questbridge recruiting organization. They pay a $15,000 annual fee and then a $4,000 commission for every low-income or URM Questbridge scholar still enrolled at Williams after a year. I think those efforts are showing up in the enrollment numbers. Now, if they can just get the faculty and students to quit hurling the n-word epithet at each other, they'll be good to go.</p>
<p>"Now, if they can just get the faculty and students to quit hurling the n-word epithet at each other, they'll be good to go."</p>
<p>What's that refer to?</p>
<p>Two well-publicized recent incidents.</p>
<p>In the first, a little over a year ago, a white tenured art professor sat at some kind of faculty meeting, with at least one African-American professor in attendance, and heatedly proclaimed that she didn't intend to be "anybody's [n-word]". It was apparently said with some hostility. As you can imagine, it created a pretty big uproar tempered only by the fact that it was at the end of the academic year so the summer allowed a bit of cooling off period. She kept her job after a public letter of apology.</p>
<p>Last year a couple of Latino students walking home across the Science Quad had stopped to chat. A drunk white student, urinating on the lawn nearby, overheard them talking in Spanish and got belligerent, unleashing a verbal barrage that included the n-word. This one resulted in an open letter to the student body from the Pres. and the Dean. These and other less dramatic incidents have created the perception among minority students (and the Pres.) that the campus community has some work to do, resulting in the appointment of an ad hoc committee on diversity, a published Diversity Report, and an upcoming major change to the housing system intended to reduce ad hoc segregation.</p>
<p>Amherst struggles with ad hoc housing segregation as well, but I haven't seen references to incidents like those. Swarthmore is very fortunate to have the culture that it does. You just don't see references to that kind of tension. I think it's partly the Quaker thing, partly the students the school attracts, partly the housing system, partly the result of a strong effort by the college toward minority representation among the faculty and deans, and partly that the school is only 62% white/US. The ethnic diversity on campus is so immediately apparent that there really isn't much choice but to have an inclusive outlook. I'm sure that it still presents challenges to the smallest minority groups, but you don't see evidence of perceived friction at least to the degree that would make it to print. My sense is that everyone feels they have a stake in the campus community.</p>